Puerto Rican drug gang fed victims to crocs; 75 indicted

February 28, 2019 | Brainwave Science

SITUATION

In a shocking discovery of inhumane behaviour, 75 members of a drug trafficking ring in Puerto Rico were indicted on Wednesday. This dangerous gang sells hard drugs in public housing complexes and shockingly throws bodies of victims to caimans, a sort of crocodile found in Central and South America. The group was involved, since 2006, in selling drugs like crack, cocaine, heroin and Xanax, in the capital of San Juan as well as shipping cocaine to the U.S. mainland.

Even the U.S. Attorney Rosa Emilia Rodriguez said that the investigators were shocked when they found out that this violent gang would take their victims and their bodies were thrown to the caimans.

The violent nature of this gang called the Las FARC is apparent from their modus operandi. FARC translates to ‘The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cantera’. It operates out of Barrio Obrero Ward in San Juan with an objective to maintain control of all the drug trafficking activities within the Santurce area by the use of force, threats, violence, and intimidation.

The authorities are not yet sure about how many victims have been fed to the crocodiles. Although it is indicated that the group is linked to more than a dozen killings. This assignment has been codenamed ‘Operation Crocodile’.

The gang members had the caimans as domestic animals in their homes. The modus operandi was to routinely authorize sellers to provide free “samples” of narcotics to “customers” in order to promote the sales of a specific brand of drugs and to get them addicted to them. As a security measure, the Las FARC would also use barriers and barricades of large water tanks, access control barriers and steel gate poles to block off streets and prevent law enforcement or rival gangs from entering the areas where they operated.

The 75 people indicted acted in different roles, including drug point owners, runners, suppliers, enforces, drug processors, sellers and facilitators. Twenty-seven of the defendants were also charged with possession of firearms.

One of the defendants was identified as Edgar Nieves, who was a city employee in the human resources department at city hall. The mayor of San Juan, Carmen Yulin Cruz, ordered Nieves suspended from his position.

“Daily, municipal employees in their respective agencies come to serve the citizens of San Juan. Recognizing that we all have the presumption of innocence until proven otherwise, as in previous occasions, we proceeded to suspend the employee,” Yulin Cruz said in a statement. “We want to clarify that the reason for which he was arrested has nothing to do with his duties in the Municipality of San Juan.” The government is seeking to seize $76 million in alleged drug profits and four properties. All defendants face a minimum of 10 years in prison, Rodriguez said.

CHALLENGE

This is a major operation which if successfully executed, will lead to a dismantling of a dangerous gang and the release of captive caiman crocodiles. Once the authorities can weaken the perimeter and enter the premises, God only knows what they will find inside. We know that drug trafficking is, directly and indirectly, related to organized crime, counterfeiting, extortion and terrorism. There will likely be the discovery of evidence related to other crimes. Since they call themselves the Revolutionary Armed Forces, they are bound to have extremist ideologies. Not all their members or supporters can live inside the premises. Ideally, all the people in their network must be identified, arrested and interrogated.

The challenge lies in the fact that their members might be living double lives as gang members and also be employed in regular jobs, like Edgar Nieves. They blend into regular society and are difficult to detect.

There must be a way to screen such criminals hiding in plain sight. Also, there must be a way to better interrogate suspects and to gather an unprecedented amount of information about the organization. It will be extremely helpful if the method can ascertain the rank of the individual in the criminal organization.

The investigative authorities, which are burdened with multiple open cases, would be delighted to see effectiveness, both cost-wise and time-wise in the way investigations and interrogations are performed.

Organisations like the Las FARC is an inhuman criminal organization, which is violent, uses extortion and coercion, and is a threat to peace and society. For this reason, it must be dealt with in the same way as a terrorist organization. iCognative tests are instrumental to determine the level of involvement in trafficking activity, whether directly or indirectly. They help to verify the hierarchal and leadership structure within criminal organizations.

In a iCognative test, words or pictures relevant to a crime, trafficking act or other significant events, are presented on a computer screen, in a series with other, irrelevant words or pictures. A test subject is made to look at these inputs/stimuli. The subject’s brainwave responses to these stimuli are measured non-invasively using a specialised headset containing sensors. A computer program then analyzes the data to determine if the crime-relevant information is stored in the brain.

iCognative does not detect guilt or innocence. iCognative also does not detect whether the subject committed the crime or not. It only detects if the subject is familiar with the relevant knowledge which is being tested.

In the iCognative test of the members of the Las FARC group, stimuli such as images of names and details of the missing victims which they might have fed to the crocodiles, details of other crimes associated with the group, known persons and places involved in the drug supply chain, known locations of labs, known weapon suppliers, etc.